Pennsylvania asks residents to kill bug on sight

Pennsylvanians cannot stomp their feet fast enough.

They’re trying. But no matter how many spotted lantern flies they crush underfoot, they cannot seem to keep the hordes of the invasive insect from flapping in their faces, sucking nutrients from valuable vineyards and lurking in their nightmares. Even after death, they pester commuters when their carcasses crunch underfoot on city sidewalks.

The inch-long creatures, which look a bit like moths and hide scarlet wings beneath gray spotted ones, moved into Philadelphia in recent weeks, swarming around parks and skyscrapers and drawing a clear response from officials: “Kill it!” a state website blares by way of advice to residents who encounter the flies. “Squash it, smash it ... just get rid of it.”

In response to the insect infiltration, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture has quarantined 14 counties — regulating what can be taken in and out — and has set up a portal and a hotline (1-8884BADFLY) to report sightings of the species, which is native to parts of Asia.

The lantern flies have already been spotted in eight states, from Virginia to Massachusetts, leading to quarantines and yearlong abatement efforts. Left alive, the pests could continue flying into more states, injuring trees, reducing fruit yields and hurting farmers’ bottom lines.

And then there’s the daily annoyance.

“If it would just leap away, people wouldn’t mind it as much, but Spotted latern flies, an invasive species, rest on a tree at a park in Montgomery County, Pa. it seems to always be in your mouth — or on you and trying to get in your mouth,” said George Holmes, mayor of Hamburg Borough in Berks County, Pennsylvania, where the flies were first found in 2014. They are believed to have arrived among a shipment of stones from Asia.

Pennsylvanians have come up with many other methods of pulverizing the lantern flies, involving baseball bats, questionable chemical solutions and even stacks of textbooks. Still, no method has been more popular than the classic foot stomp, which seems to have united residents as if it were a service requirement of living in the state.